CAC withdraws registration certificate
CAC withdraws Ohanaeze, ACF certificates
Socio-cultural groups in the country have lost their legal status.
Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) used the hammer on Monday as it withdrew the registration certificate of several socio-cultural groups.
Those affected are; Ohanaeze Ndigbo General Assembly, the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) and others.
The Registrar General of CAC, Mr Garba Abubakar, said the step was taken to address security concerns.
He said the Commission will henceforth subject such applications to thorough scrutiny following security threats that may arise from such registrations.
He said reforms are aimed at sanitising the Commission operations which lead to the recent withdrawal of the certificate of registration earlier issued to Ohaneze Ndigbo General Assembly.
Hear him: “Yes, we have withdrawn the certificate of Ohanaeze Ndigbo General Assembly because the certificate should not have been issued in the first instance.
“We have an established protocol that all organisations; ethnic, religious with political implication should be referred for security clearance before such organisations are registered. In 2017, a similar organisation, Ohanaeze Ndigbo Worldwide applied to be registered and security agencies rejected it.
“It would have been a double standard to allow another organisation to be registered. Up till now, Arewa Consultative Forum is not registered because they were not given security clearance, we have South-South Youth Forum, NorthEast Youth Forum and so many organisations that have not been allowed to register.
He said further “What we have done after withdrawing the certificate (of Ohanaeze Ndigbo General Assembly), we now referred the application for security clearance, if at the end of the day we are advised that this object is consistent with what the law says, and the trustees are fit and proper, then we will go ahead, but till then, we have withdrawn the certificate and they have threatened to go to court, we are lawyers, we will meet them in court.”
According to him “In the past we allowed customers to handle our documents. Customers can apply for documents and we will bring out the file, give it to him, he searched, extract the information he needs and return the file. That is compromising the integrity of the information. In so many occasions, we have apprehended lawyers that have stolen particulars for companies that are under investigations or that have disputes among the shareholders.
He said “Only two weeks ago, a lawyer was apprehended for forging signatures. His specialisation is when documents are queried for irregular signatures, he signed again for these customers.”